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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28138476">there's no remedy for memory, your face is like a melody</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/castelia/pseuds/castelia'>castelia</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>White Collar (TV 2009)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Gen, Hallucinations, Introspection, Non-Consensual Drug Use, POV Second Person, Post-Season/Series 04, References to Suicide</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 15:22:32</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,790</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28138476</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/castelia/pseuds/castelia</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Kate smiles like you two are sharing a secret—a music box, a false promise, a blown up plane—before she turns around and leaves.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Neal Caffrey/Kate Moreau, Peter Burke &amp; Neal Caffrey</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>there's no remedy for memory, your face is like a melody</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">The case should have been straightforward. A jewelry heist is more exciting than mortgage fraud, but straightforward nonetheless: go in undercover, (with any luck) avoid the van, and catch the bad guy.</p><p class="p1">Of course, when something doesn’t go according to plan, you usually thrive. You actually prefer it, when someone recognizes you while you’re undercover, when a perp goes off-script, when you can <em>improvise</em>. It’s a way to keep your skills sharp and it gives you a rush you can’t quite explain.</p><p class="p1">Not this time, though. No, this time easily goes in your top five worst cases. Getting ransomed and nearly dying by arrow are in that list somewhere, but that’s besides the point.</p><p class="p1">Later, you will curse yourself for scanning the building for clues instead of paying better attention to your drink.</p><p class="p1">Now, though, you are running up the stairs to get away while whatever it is that you got dosed with is starting to take effect. When you reach the roof, you see a woman standing near the edge.</p><p class="p1">“Hello?” you call out, cautious. “Are you okay?”</p><p class="p1">The woman is pale and beautiful, her dark hair blowing in the wind. You’ve seen her before, you think, but can’t quite place her.</p><p class="p1">“…Hello?” you repeat when you don’t get an answer.</p><p class="p1">When you blink, she is suddenly away from the edge and right in front of you.</p><p class="p1">“Hi,” she says, and you feel like the breath is knocked out of you, because you know that voice, those blue eyes, soft lips quirking into a knowing smile.</p><p class="p1">“Kate,” you breathe, but it’s not quite her.</p><p class="p1">Translucent scars that should litter her are absent. Her skin is pristine and her eyes are innocent in a way they haven’t been in a long time.</p><p class="p1">“Are you okay?” she asks kindly. “You don’t look well.”</p><p class="p1">“I’m fine,” you say, for lack of anything coherent coursing through your mind.</p><p class="p1">“‘The greatest lies a con man tells are to himself’,” she quotes, her smile widening, eyes twinkling like you two are sharing a joke. “But I’m not supposed to know that yet.”</p><p class="p1">It’s something Mozzie used to say, you remember, back when you were a trio against the world.</p><p class="p1">Just like that, Kate shifts. Her eyes gain a knowing glint that comes with experience, with being conned and vowing never to go through that again, becoming the con artist instead. You know it well. Her hands are more calloused, a results of many heists.</p><p class="p1">This is a different Kate standing before you. More familiar, yet still not the same as you saw her last.</p><p class="p1">These sudden changes don’t matter to you. Your mind tingles like you are forgetting something important, but nothing has ever mattered when you are with Kate. She has a way of making your worries go away.</p><p class="p1">“I missed you.”</p><p class="p1">“Sorry,” she says. “I haven’t had a lot of time lately. My boyfriend is in prison and I visit him every week.”</p><p class="p1">Boyfriend? Lightheaded, you scour your memories and come up short. The tingling increases.</p><p class="p1">“Is it hard?” you ask, curious. “To stay faithful to someone who’s not even there?”</p><p class="p1">“Sometimes I wonder why I bother. He left me to pull a heist with another girl, you know,” she says conversationally, and your eyes widen, because—you <em>do</em> know, she is talking about <em>you</em>, Alex and Copenhagen.</p><p class="p1">You promised Kate a better life, drinking cheap wine from a bottle of Bordeaux and pretending your motel was the height of luxury in France, and you never delivered.</p><p class="p1">Kate’s voice is incredibly gentle when she adds, “And then I see him behind that glass and I remember. He’s worth it.”</p><p class="p1">Determination sparks a fire in her eyes as she shifts like sand once again.</p><p class="p1">“Oh,” she says, her eyes guarded yet hopeful. “I have to go.”</p><p class="p1">“Where?”</p><p class="p1">“Our second chance,” she tells you. “You finally delivered.”</p><p class="p1">Realization hits you like a truck. Kate smiles like you two are sharing a secret—a music box, a false promise, a blown up plane—before she turns around and leaves.</p><p class="p1">“Wait!” you call out frantically, your heart thundering in your chest. “Kate! It’s not safe! Wait, <em>please</em>.”</p><p class="p1">Kate does not wait. You blink and she has vanished, well on her way to a hanger bay that will leave her body and your heart in pieces.</p><p class="p1">You sink to your knees with a muffled sob when you realize there is no hanger bay for her to go to because you are on a roof. Kate was never here, you never would have been able to save her, because she died a long time ago.</p><p class="p1">There’s a pressure on you, as if someone is holding you (holding you <em>back</em> from the edge of the roof), but you don’t see anyone, and you don’t care, anyway. Kate is gone.</p><p class="p1">
  <em>—It’s okay he drugged you whatever you’re seeing is not real—</em>
</p><p class="p1">
  <em>—Don’t jump—</em>
</p><p class="p1">Words from the ghost holding you. They sound far away, like they’re shouted in a long tunnel, or from a mountain. They’re false. Kate’s death is very real, and so is the crushing feeling in your chest, like you just lost her all over again.</p><p class="p1">“Danny?”</p><p class="p1">Your heart stops. That name. That voice. It’s not possible.</p><p class="p1">“<em>Ellen</em>?” you choke out.</p><p class="p1">“Danny?” She hasn’t called you that in years but she hasn’t sounded this young in years, either. “Danny, where are you?”</p><p class="p1">“I’m—I’m right here,” you say, standing up and shaking off whoever is touching you, desperate to catch a glimpse of her.</p><p class="p1">You blink and she’s <em>there</em>, red hair, young face, beautiful like you remember her.</p><p class="p1"><em>(“I will do </em>everything<em> I can to keep you safe.”</em>)</p><p class="p1">“Ellen?” you whisper, feeling like a child again, <em>why doesn’t my mom love me why doesn’t she talk why won’t she look at me?</em></p><p class="p1">“Neal,” she says, and when you blink her hair is gray and her face is more wrinkled but no less beautiful. “What happened to you?”</p><p class="p1">The same voice from somewhere distant…</p><p class="p1">—<em>Have to let the drugs run their course—</em></p><p class="p1">
  <em>—Once the fatigue kicks in I’ll get him away from the roof—</em>
</p><p class="p1">…but you ignore it. It sounds less like a tunnel or mountain and more like it’s shouted from across the room, but you ignore that, too.</p><p class="p1">“What do you mean?”</p><p class="p1">Her eyes are full of disappointment. It twists a knife in you, somewhere deep and vital. “You were such a bright eyed boy, full of hopes and dreams. Instead of realizing any of them you went to prison.”</p><p class="p1">You don’t think you can feel worse, but then she adds:</p><p class="p1">“Like your father.”</p><p class="p1">And Ellen looks at you like your mother looked at you in her more lucid days, like she wants to hastily use furniture to hide a dirty stain and pretend everything is perfect. You blink away the hot sting of tears in your eyes.</p><p class="p1">“I’m not him,” you plead. “I’m not a murderer.”</p><p class="p1">Your mind flashes to crashing through a window, firing off a single warning shot, several bullets left in your stolen gun. One for Fowler. One for you.</p><p class="p1">And you know that you could have been. You think Ellen knows it, too, shaking her head with wet eyes before she’s gone.</p><p class="p1">She’s not on her way to anywhere, no hangar bay, no destination. She’s just gone. Dead, you are reminded in a sudden moment of clarity.</p><p class="p1">She is dead because of you, like Kate is dead because of you, like everything around you gets hurt because that is who you are.</p><p class="p1">“Neal?”</p><p class="p1">You hear the voice again but this time you recognize it, that's Peter's voice, and it's like he's behind you. </p><p class="p1">Because he is, you find out when you turn around. You hide your shaking hands behind your back while you wonder if this is the real Peter or just another Kate or Ellen.</p><p class="p1">You vaguely hope it’s the latter because you are trying and failing not to cry and it’s kind of undignified. There’s a facade you put up for the FBI, crafted as well as any alias. Caffrey, who jumps off skyscapers with a parachute and a megawatt smile (you know what it’s like to fall). This, tears streaming from your face on a roof, doesn’t really fit with that. Or does it?</p><p class="p1">You don’t really know, but you think your confusion can be cut some slack because you’ve hallucinated twice (thrice?) now.</p><p class="p1">“That’s me,” you say, halfheartedly wiping away at your eyes with your sleeve. Normally, you would be appalled at that, would never sully your clothing that way, but again. It’s been a day.</p><p class="p1">“You alright?” Peter’s voice is careful, so very careful that it makes you wonder what this must look like. That it makes you realize that maybe-fake-Peter saw you talking to two people that weren’t actually there.</p><p class="p1">(Two people who aren’t actually here, and never will be again. The final bullet in the gun was for you, because you didn’t just think Fowler was responsible, and if you wanted justice—revenge—all the responsible parties had to die, to know how she felt in her final moments.</p><p class="p1">Including you.)</p><p class="p1">“You ever wonder what it’s like to jump off a building?” you ask, before hurrying to placate, “Not to die.”</p><p class="p1">The panic in Peter’s face eases, but only a little.</p><p class="p1">“But to fall, down, and down, and down,” you continue, something thrumming in your veins that’s making you say things Caffrey wouldn’t ever say. Someone you’re not, and someone you are more than anyone. “I’ve done it. Multiple times.”</p><p class="p1">“I’m aware,” he says dryly, which would have made you chuckle if you you had been anywhere else. <em>You mean my tendency to use heights to my advantage </em>isn’t<em> appreciated by Peter Burke? I’m hurt. </em>But you are standing on the roof of a warehouse, and you’re not sure if this Peter Burke is real or not.</p><p class="p1">“It felt good,” you say, heart pounding. “I always hear about people being afraid of heights, of hating that feeling of your stomach dropping while you drop. But I didn’t feel bad. I felt…”</p><p class="p1"><em>Free, </em>you don’t want to say. You don’t want to say any of this, but not even whatever is making you do it can force that word out. <em>Free</em>.</p><p class="p1">“You’ve been drugged,” maybe-real-Peter says calmly, but you know how to read people and this calm is as forced as it can be.</p><p class="p1"><em>Oh</em>, you think. <em>That makes sense.</em></p><p class="p1">“It does,” he says which makes you realize that you said it out loud. “So why don’t you get away from the roof while you can work through whatever’s in your system? You can come to my place. Elizabeth will fuss over you and make cornish hens. Your favorite.”</p><p class="p1">It sounds nice.</p><p class="p1">“You never liked Kate,” you reply instead, which you are aware is a complete non-sequitur but it still makes sense in your head. You just saw her again, after all, and Peter stands in front of you now. He and Elizabeth both never understood what you and Kate had.</p><p class="p1">And crack goes the facade of Peter’s forced calm, even if it’s just for a second. “We can talk about that later.”</p><p class="p1">You smile. “No, we won’t. Because when I’m, you know,” you make a vague gesture at yourself, “me again, I won’t want to talk about it, and you know that. You’re just avoiding the subject.”</p><p class="p1">“I didn’t know her,” he says through gritted teeth. “I met her two times, one of which she pulled a gun on me.”</p><p class="p1">“She was being threatened by an FBI agent!” you cry out, startling Peter, but you don’t <em>care</em>. This whole thing has been so twisted and no one but you has ever understood. “She was scared and she didn’t know you, what were you expecting? A soliloquy about how much she loves me?”</p><p class="p1">“No,” he admits. “But I didn’t see any—“</p><p class="p1">“Love for me in her eyes, yes, yes, I know,” you say, rolling your eyes. “She is a con woman. Was.” You swallow the lump in your throat. “She was a con woman and she wasn’t going to show you her cards.”</p><p class="p1">Finally, Peter gives up any semblance of calm and lets the conflict show on his face. “Neal, I don’t know what you want me to say here. I might have misjudged you and Kate—“</p><p class="p1">“<em>Everyone</em> misjudged us!” you yell, sweating. “Everyone misjudged <em>her</em>. I’m the one who pulled her into the life of a criminal after her previous secure life fell apart, and people think <em>she</em> manipulated <em>me</em>. Why does everyone doubt her? They don’t even know her.”</p><p class="p1">You’ve slipped into present tense again, damn, damn, damn it all. You push down nausea and keep going.</p><p class="p1">“Elizabeth said I was in love with an idea and maybe she was right, maybe I did love the idea of settling down somewhere nice with her. Getting on that plane and finally being together again. I loved the idea but I loved her, too. I still do. She’s gone but the love is still there.” Your voice breaks. “She visited me in prison every week for years. You don’t have any idea what that’s like.”</p><p class="p1">Your vision is blurring again, which is unfortunate because Peter still hasn’t vanished yet which means he’s probably not a hallucination. Which means this is the second time he’s seen you cry in five minutes, which is just the cherry on top of this crappy case.</p><p class="p1">“You’re right,” Peter says placatingly. “I don’t. I’m sorry.”</p><p class="p1"><em>I would’ve killed myself, you know</em>, you (<em>don’t</em>) want to say. You want to explain the feeling of trying to join Kate in the flames. You want to bring your full plan to light from that day when you sought justice. Revenge. Whatever. You would’ve killed Fowler, and then Diana would’ve shot you, or Peter would’ve (though you can’t quite picture that) but if they hadn’t you would’ve shot yourself.</p><p class="p1"><em>(“What happened to you?”</em>)</p><p class="p1">“Let’s go home,” you say instead, feeling impossibly tired.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">At the Burke house—after tests and treatments and making sure that you’ll be okay, after the drugs are out of your system and you feel like yourself again—Peter looks at you, long and hard, face inscrutable.</p><p class="p1">“What? Are my eyes not blue anymore?” you quip, feeling uncomfortable about everything that happened. You have built your life on a facade, on pretending, and those drugs had left you vulnerable in a way you don’t ever wish to be again.</p><p class="p1">Peter gets this look in his eyes like he’s going to <em>talk</em> about what happened on the roof, and you hastily try to think of something to say, to divert the attention to a different subject, but you are too late.</p><p class="p1">“The drugs. The, uh. Hallucinations.” He looks uncomfortable too because of course he does, he probably just wants to say something like <em>cowboy up</em> and leave it at that. You wish he would. “They were Ellen and Kate.”</p><p class="p1">You want to roll your eyes and say something along the lines of <em>gee, really, I hadn’t noticed </em>but there’s no need to make this conversation worse than it already is, so you just nod.</p><p class="p1">“I know that you miss them,” he says. “Of course you do, but I hope you know that they’re not…”</p><p class="p1">He clears his throat.</p><p class="p1">“I mean, you’ve got people here who care about you.”<em> Living people</em>, his lips don’t say but his eyes betray. “You know that, don’t you?”</p><p class="p1">You realize that it didn’t matter that you didn’t voice your thoughts on the roof. That Peter was aware of your half-baked plan that day you stole a gun, but just hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it. Until you kind of accidentily forced him to today.</p><p class="p1">You smile because it’s easy again. You make sure your tone is light: “I thought the FBI frowned upon forming personal bonds with a CI.”</p><p class="p1">“Screw ‘em.” His blunt answer makes your smile fade. “Just tell me you know, Neal.” Once again, you hear the unspoken words. <em>Tell me you won’t do anything crazy. Well, crazier than your usual Caffrey standard. </em></p><p class="p1">“Yeah,” you say, serious. “I know.” <em>I won’t.</em></p><p class="p1">It had been an old plan anyway, back when the grief over Kate threatened to engulf you in flames just like her. You’ve since moved on. Not from Kate. Never from Kate. The drugs had brought out a truth you hadn’t voiced: she’s gone, but you’ll love her forever.</p><p class="p1">You have moved on from that plan, that bullet meant for you, that anger and desperation you clung to with everything you had because if you let go you would have lost yourself. And—your mind involuntarily flashes to Peter, Mozzie, June, Diana and Jones—that’s not something you want.</p><p class="p1">“I know,” you repeat, and you mean it.</p><p class="p1"> </p>
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